Two thinkers on the left offer a guide to navigating the stormy seas of modernity.
Books
Book reviews and essays from the Washington Monthly on the new books shaping debates over politics, policy, history, and American democracy.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
Obama’s Considerable, if Shaky, Legacy
What Trump can and cannot unwind.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
Why Does Congress Do So Little?
The structural incentives for “losing to win.”
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
From Spying to Killing
How America’s “secret war” in Laos transformed the CIA.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
Arab Fling
How the feckless meddling of Syria’s neighbors made the civil war there worse.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
Power to the People
Liberals have lost touch with their populist roots, which calls for a fresh articulation of a very old idea: anti-domination.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
Entrepreneurship at Home and Abroad
Why Donald Trump should listen to two visionary businessmen who didn’t support him.
Posted inBooks, January/February 2017, Magazine
The Birth of the Imperial Presidency
How America’s late-nineteenth-century conquest of Cuba and the Philippines still haunts our foreign policy.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2016
The Enigma of Ulysses S. Grant
A magisterial new biography fails to crack the mystery of America’s greatest general.
Posted inBooks, Magazine, November/December 2016
Trump’s Supporters Revealed
Two new books underscore the big lesson of 2016: GOP base voters hate big government spending only when the “wrong” people benefit.
